Chapter One

Hartsville, North Carolina
June 2004

The Confederate stood on the seventy-first of the one hundred and five concrete steps that led from Hartsville's Main Street to the Pisgah County Courthouse. Rifle at his side, he'd kept a weatherbeaten watch for any encroaching Yankees for as long as Mary Crow could remember. Passing him on her fourth-grade civics field trip, she'd cowered at his towering bronze fierceness. Six years later, as she'd rushed past to apply for her driver's license, she'd found him an embarrassing symbol of the unreconstructed South. Today, nearly twenty-five years after their first acquaintance, the old boy seemed as comforting as a childhood friend. Not much else about Pisgah County did.

"Hey, Johnny Reb." She paused for a moment to look up at the carefully wrought figure of a young private in the Confederate Army. Having been erected in front of the courthouse, he truly faced east, but cut his eyes northward, ever vigilant for an enemy approach. Though birds had roosted on his shoulders and one long strand of spiderweb dangled from his rear, he still looked ready to face whatever challenge the blue bellies might throw at him. Mary wondered if she was in such good shape. Already she was breathing heavily from her climb, and she still had thirty-four steps to go. She'd forgotten how hot the early June sun could be in the Carolina mountains, and she'd foolishly worn Deathwrap, her prosecutorial black suit. Comfortable in the relentlessly air-conditioned courtrooms of Atlanta, here sleek Deathwrap felt like a portable sauna, too close, too heavy, too tight against her skin.

"Damn," she grumbled, leaning against the base of the statue. Already she'd torn her hose and sweated through her underwear. Pretty soon she'd have big damp circles under her arms. In her business it was never good to be visibly nervous; to be both nervous and sweating like a pig did not bode well at all.

Nonetheless, she had an appointment with DA George Turpin in four minutes, and she intended to keep it. Squaring her shoulders, she resumed her ascent to the courthouse. As her high heels clicked on the steps, she gave a rueful smile at the irony of her undertaking. When she was eighteen, she'd ached to leave Pisgah County forever. Today, at thirty-five, she couldn't wait to come back home.

The past twelve months had been her year of living dangerously. She'd left her ADA job in Atlanta to go to Peru with archaeologist Gabe Benge. Though it seemed like a wonderful chance for a whole new life, eight months into it she knew she'd made a mistake. One day she was taking a boat ride on Lake Titicaca. As she looked over into the water, a huge fish surfaced next to the boat. For a moment it swam along beside them, its scales flashing in the sun, then it returned to the depths of the lake, the beautiful silver body fading into the translucent green water. Instinctively, she turned to tell Jonathan, then she caught herself. Jonathan was not here. Jonathan was in another country, another hemisphere. Jonathan would never share that singular moment with the silvery fish and the blue sky and green Lake Titicaca. The realization struck her with such a yearning for home that it was all she could do to stay in the boat and not start swimming for shore. Why are you here, the lake seemed to whisper, among mountains you can't name, Indians who will never regard you as anything more than a tourist? It was then that she knew she had to go home. Not home to Gabe or even home to Atlanta, but back to her true home in the North Carolina mountains, her true home with Jonathan Walkingstick. Somehow everything she didn't need at eighteen, she needed quite desperately now.

But coming home to Pisgah County required money, and for that, she needed a job. She'd called George Turpin two weeks ago, as soon as she stepped off the plane in Atlanta. He'd sounded enthusiastic over the phone—Yes, I'd love to talk to you, love to have a woman of your experience on my staff. In fact, we have a man who's taking early retirement. When could you come up for a talk? They'd made their arrangements, and settled upon today, here, in about three minutes. If she hurried, she would be on time.

She finally reached the hundred and fifth step, and strode into the vaulted lobby of the old courthouse. She passed a gaggle of secretaries clad in frothy print dresses, hurrying to begin their day's work. Suddenly she felt even more out of place. Swathed in black among women clad in the colors of melting sherbet, she realized she must look like the grim reaper seeking her next victim. When she glanced over her shoulder and caught one of the secretaries casting a curious eye back at her, she knew without a doubt that she would be the courthouse's gossip tidbit du jour. Did y'all see that girl dressed in that fancy black suit? Who was she? You don't see clothes like that around here. She must be some hot shot, over from Raleigh. Don't kid yourself, honey. Didn't you see that hair? She was pure Cherokee. . . .

Shrugging off the imaginary wags, Mary checked the building directory beside the elevator. Turpin's office was on the third floor. She rode up with two men in seersucker suits, one of whom looked like someone she might have gone to high school with. She considered introducing herself, but both hurried out when they reached the second floor. She rode on, alone, to the next floor, where at the end of the hall stood a frosted glass door with "George H. Turpin, District Attorney" lettered in gold.

She entered to find an older woman seated behind a desk. Gray hair curled on her head like steel wool, and unlike the younger women downstairs, she wore a more decorous linen suit with a simple white blouse. When the woman looked up at Mary, her mouth drew down in a thin line.

"May I help you?"

"I have an appointment with Mr. Turpin at nine o'clock," Mary answered. "My name is Mary Crow."

Her words seemed to frost the woman further. Mary knew her name was not altogether unknown here. She had, three years ago, broken up a conspiracy that had put Pisgah County Sheriff Stump Logan on the FBI's most wanted list. Then, a year later, she had killed that same sheriff near Devil's Fork Gap in Madison County. Though Logan had been found to be a kidnapper, rapist, and murderer, he had also headed a powerful political machine and was still fondly remembered by a number of people on the county payroll. Mary knew that she would have to tread carefully in this courthouse.

Turpin's secretary began writing in some kind of logbook. "Mary C-r-o-w-e," she spelled aloud, using the traditional Cherokee spelling of the name.

"Just C-r-o-w," Mary corrected.

"Really? Most people around here spell it the other way." The woman looked at her with eyes like chips of dark stone.

Mary shrugged. She'd dropped the e on the end of her name back when she'd gone to college and simultaneously dropped most all of her Cherokee past. She wasn't sure there was any point in adding it now.

"Have a seat," the secretary said, not bothering to correct her misspelling. "Mr. Turpin'll see you in a moment."

Mary crossed the room and sat by a window that afforded her a view of Johnny Reb's backside, with Hartsville stretched out beyond him. A town of storefronts and sidewalks, Hartsville stood wedged in between a line of the Southern Railroad and the looming Plott Balsam Mountains. It had changed a lot in her seventeen-year absence. Though the west end of Main Street was still somberly comprised of law offices, banks, a motel, and Morehouse's funeral home, trendier, more lighthearted businesses had opened up on east Main. On her way to the courthouse Mary had passed a travel agency, a yoga studio, a massage and nail salon, and a restaurant that proudly displayed its rave review in Southern Living magazine. Who would have thought that? Mary wondered, remembering when Hartsville's most exotic restaurant was the Fish Camp Grill, a shack on the river that would fry, for a small fee, whatever you managed to catch off their back deck, hush puppies and coleslaw compliments of the house.

"Ms. Crow?"

A deep voice interrupted her drift into the past. She turned to face a heavyset, balding man dressed in the summer uniform of all Southern attorneys—khaki trousers, navy blazer, striped regimental tie. "George Turpin." He extended his hand, his smile revealing a chipped front tooth that gave him a boyish look that belied his middle age. "I've heard so much about you. It's a real pleasure to meet you."

Copyright © 2005 by Sallie Bissell